1) Emplode doesn't pick up the correct ID3 tag when there are more than one in an MP3.

This is very interesting, and obviously a precedence thing. If it's important to you, I could look at one of the offending files in UltraEdit and figure out exactly what's going wrong.

2)Drag and drop / copy-paste a directory structure into Emplode is a necessary feature to create playlists.

Actually, it's not totally necessary- I hand-create all my playlists and drag the songs in individual groups...

However there is no way (that I've found) to subsequently sync the empeg playlist structure with that same directory structure, to add/replace/remove only files that have changed/moved/been added/deleted.

Hmm, I see your point, but I don't think it was designed for you to make minor edits by doing big folder-drops. It's really not that tough to drag and drop individual songs here and there as you make changes. You shouldn't need to do a huge folder-drop every time you change one song.

Yes, you make a good point that it would be simpler to edit the directory structure once and re-synch. But at that point, you're talking about a system where the PC is the "master" list, and the empeg is the "slave". That's contrary to the empeg's root design. The whole idea is that the empeg doesn't permanently depend on any files stored on the PC at all.

For instance, the MP3s stored on my work computer are a completely different set than the ones stored on my home computer. But I can manage all the playlists and songs on either computer because emplode is just a terminal to the database stored in the empeg itself. I can add songs from either computer, I can edit the playlist structure, I can do whatever I want. If I had to depend completely upon the directory structure on my home PC, it'd be hard to make edits from my work PC.

Now, I do keep my home PC's directories arranged in a similar way to what's on the empeg, but that's just so it'll be easier to replace it if the empeg's hard disk goes south. Not because I'm anal about keeping the two exactly the same. In fact, I don't really use the PC to listen to the music any more, it's just a backup storehouse of my MP3 files. I do all my listening on the empeg, so I concentrate primarily on maintaining its structure rather than the PC's structure.

3) Sync is _so_ slow! I thought that USB was up to 11Mbit/s, I'm getting about 2.4 (quick estimate), with a brand new high performance Dell desktop running Win2k. Particularly frustrating is the long (10-15 minute) pause before anything happens at the start of a sync, where Emplode doesn't respond even to window redraw requests.

That doesn't sound right. I think this should be in Bug Reports. The 10-minute pause at the start of a synch has been reported by one other person. That's definitely a bug- get a log file and see what it's saying at the moment of the pause.

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Tony Fabris